


Some pure motive inside of me

by CarrotSticks



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Episode Fix-It: s01e06 Rare Species, Gen, but if geralt doesn't apologize in s2 i will Cry, i am a million years late to the party, its not really a fix it, more like the post-ep bit we don't see
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:27:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24343510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarrotSticks/pseuds/CarrotSticks
Summary: Geralt is not good with words, and receives some help from unknown sources.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion
Kudos: 14





	Some pure motive inside of me

Jaskier was long gone by the time Geralt had come down from that wretched mountain, not even a trace of his scent left to mark which way he’d gone. Geralt was still pissed, but he’d wanted to take his words back almost as soon as they’d left his mouth, except he couldn't make himself speak past the knot in his throat. It was still there, choking him with helpless rage and no small amount of self recrimination. For a while he’d waited, at the foot of that mountain, a couple days camped out and not, despite whatever jaskier would’ve said about it, absolutely not brooding. He hasn't quite been able to articulate what he was waiting for, not even to himself. If he was waiting for Jaskier to come back or for his scent to dissipate from the trails around, so Geralt wouldn’t be tempted to follow. 

Whatever he’s waiting for doesn’t come, anyway. Eventually he just packs up his little camp and sets off with roach on the trail that seems most likely to pass near a river. He figures he might as well travel following the stream for a while, rather than set out for yet another nowhere town in search of yet more monsters to kill. He can fish just fine, and there’ll be plenty of grass along the riverbanks for roach. He even almost manages to convince himself he’s fine with the silence, that he doesn’t miss the quiet rhythm of footsteps beside him, or sharing the day’s catch over a fire at night. 

Following the river upstream does lead him to a small village, after a couple weeks. He debates with himself just going around for the whole day it takes to get there, but it's hard to find a reason not to go through town when he’s doing his very best to not admit the real reason is that he’s afraid of running into jaskier there. He ends up in the village anyway, and tells himself it's because eating not much else but fish and whatever he can forage on the trail is wearing on him. And roach would probably appreciate the rest as well. 

He needn’t have worried about running into the bard anyway; as far as he can tell from overheard conversations he hasn’t been through, although a rowdy table of drunk men at the local tavern do their best rendition of a few of his songs, making geralt drink too fast and unable to discern if he wants to ride out right now, immediately, or if he wants to stay and never move from his seat, as long as he can hear even this pale echo of his friend’s voice. because jaskier is his friend, he can admit that much now. Or maybe was his friend, he amends after a moment. He doesn't really feel like he can lay such a claim to jaskier anymore.

He rides out early the next morning, early enough that not even the birds have started singing, and it all just makes him miss another kind of singing all the more. Enough that when he does catch a faint strum on the wind, once the better part of the day is over and the sky is slipping into pink and gold light, he follows it, ignoring the sharp ache in his chest, ignoring that he still doesn’t know what to say, how to apologize. He doesn’t know whether he’s more disappointed or relieved when it turns out not to be jaskier, but he suspects he would’ve wished for a different outcome no matter what he’d found.

The strumming resolves itself into a simple melody before he can see who’s playing, but it’s not the distinctive twang of a lute, nor is the voice the one he half dreaded. The man is singing softly enough for only himself (and geralt, by virtue of his enhanced senses) to hear, apparently an unfinished song, judging by how half the lyrics are merely a tonal humming. The bits that do have words speak of a love song, all soft ache and devotion. The stranger stops singing once geralt comes within his field of vision, but doesn’t stop his gentle plucking, filling the clearing he sits in with a faint counterpoint to the birdsong around. Neither of them speaks at first, geralt remaining at the furthest edge of the clearing, and the stranger seeming content to sit there and play and not look at him. 

It grows dark in the forest before either of them move, but just as geralt is considering setting up camp, the man across from him stands up and brushes off the dirt from his pants. “I have meat and beer at my camp if you’d like, white wolf. Though I'm sure you could just sit there all night, even a witcher would surely prefer being by a fire, no?” he doesn’t wait for geralt, unconcerned whether he follows or not, and when geralt catches up to him he’s surprised to be the shorter one for once, by a good five inches, even. It's rare for him to feel small, even if the other man is so skinny geralt’s confident he wouldn't even need his witcher strength to throw him clear across a field. His camp is small but there’s a firepit dug out, lined with stone, already lit. 

As promised, the stranger passes geralt a whole pint of beer produced seemingly from thin air, and spits a lamb leg to roast over the fire, obtained with similar methods. Geralt feels like he should keep a knife in hand, or at least not let his guard down further than his loneliness forces him to, but his medallion stays inert on his chest, and the stranger seems more interested in the fat dripping over the fire than in anything Geralt does. Which is just fine with geralt, really. Just because he’d grown used to jaskier constantly engaging him didn’t mean- but it did, didn’t it. And geralt had resolved that a good first step to figuring out how to apologize would be to admit (at the very least, to himself) how important jaskier had come to be to him. The ache he’d left at Geralt's side like an afterimage of himself, like looking into a candleflame and then seeing its bright imprint just out of focus afterwards. Not that geralt hadn’t brought it on himself. 

The stranger sitting beside him had yet to look at him directly, but he spoke after taking a deep pull from his own beer: “have you decided what you’ll say to him yet?”  
“What. How could you know-” shit. Maybe he should’ve kept that knife in hand after all.  
“You could not have been saying it louder had you actually spoken. I suspect that's a theme with you, but you’re gonna have to try harder for this. Whatever ‘it’ is. In my experience, just letting him know you’re trying will go a long way, so don’t worry too much about it.”  
Geralt didn’t know what to say, and he was saved by the chunk of meat he was handed right then, juicy and steaming, speared on a stick separate from the spit. He ate quickly, and his host must’ve done so too, though geralt would later be unable to recall if he’d actually seen him eat. 

The stranger wiped his hands clean and picked up his light bag, apparently intending on traveling through the night woods, and turned to leave with his instrument case in hand.

“I wish you good luck, white wolf. Feel free to sleep here if you want, no sense in wasting a good campsite.”  
“Go well.” Geralt could say nothing more to this stranger who’d been so unusually helpful. In a way, he felt the stranger had known exactly what was happening to geralt. Maybe he’d even known jaskier, going by how he talked of him. 

Geralt bedded down to faint music in the distance that night, and woke up thinking maybe he’d try going down to the coast.

**Author's Note:**

> i just was suddenly gripped with the STRONGEST need to see hozier exist in the witcher universe (did you guess that's who it was? please tell me what you thought was going on!!)


End file.
